New garden center opening in CdA

Theron Vanhoff, left, and his sister, Stacey Van Wingerden, are preparing to open Vanhoff’s Garden Center on Government Way in Coeur d’Alene, the former site of Pedal Pushers. (Kathy Plonka / The Spokesman-Review)

’Tis the season, but it isn’t Christmas.

Color and greenery will be featured as Vanhoff’s Garden Center opens Friday at 1844 Government Way. The 2,600-square-foot greenhouse and store with a large patio and outside sales area on the half-acre plot formerly was Pedal Pushers.

With six employees, Vanhoff and Van Wingerden (brother and sister who were raised in Spokane) have sold wholesale items to big box stores from their Mountainside Greenhouse for 15 years. The new store will be open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily except Monday. Phone (208) 930-4424.

’Tis tuxedo season too

With proms in season at most high schools, formal wear is in demand. Tuxedo Gallery is taking advantage of the events by moving to a larger, more visible location in Coeur d’Alene and adding its fourth store in Spokane.

The new CdA location is the 1,800-square-foot store formerly occupied by Little Seattle Coffee Shop at 2310 N. Fourth St. (between I-90 and Appleway). The store moved two weeks ago from a 1,000-square-foot shop at 1928 Fourth St.

With tuxedos, trousers, shirts, vest, ties, studs and cufflinks, the store’s four employees show customers samples and fax their orders to be sent from the Spokane warehouse. The store started 25 years ago as Wagner’s Formal Wear, and Gene Slatter bought it 13 years ago and opened his CdA store in 2002.

LDS groundbreaking today

Speakers, music and turning of the dirt at noon today will signify the groundbreaking of a new meetinghouse in Post Falls for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The 16,558-square-foot facility on four acres at McGuire Road and Midway Avenue will include a chapel, 19 classrooms, library, three offices, a serving area and a gym/cultural hall. The chapel will seat 350 people with overflow to 1,020.

“We’re bursting at the seams,” said spokesman Scott Pingel of the current Post Falls facility. “This will give us the opportunity to reorganize and continue to grow. It’s been a rich history of commitment by many people.”

With the second church, the Post Falls group of three wards will add a fourth with two wards in each place. The local stake will have nine wards, with five in Coeur d’Alene.

This week’s tidbits

•Art Walk on the second Friday of each month, continues to bring hundreds of people to downtown Coeur d’Alene. Last Friday, with temperatures in the 60s in the late afternoon, nearly all the sidewalk seats were taken at local taverns and eateries. Watch for three new galleries and other new downtown businesses to open in the next month.

•The $2.7 million addition to Coeur d’Alene’s Costco will bring the present 136,000-square-foot building to 148,000 square feet, the size of the average Costco warehouse. With its headquarters in Issaquah, Wash., the company has 555 stores worldwide. Discovering the CdA Costco was one of my most fun business column moments. I saw stakes pounded into a vacant lot on Neider Avenue, parked in the field and explored the stakes. The ones on the street just had lot numbers written on them, but one in a back corner said “Costco.” Whoopee!